Winston-Salem, you've been Jenkins-ed.
That's Jenkins as in Mark Jenkins, a famous artist who has stopped pedestrians around the world midstep with his life-size, life-like packing-tape casts of bodies positioned in sometimes strange, sometimes normal, always weird ways.
The commotion in Winston-Salem started about 1:15 p.m. yesterday, when police and medics rushed to the corner of Eighth and Trade streets downtown. They'd gotten a report that a woman's body was draped on top of a billboard. They got there, looked up, saw the body and started to climb.
When they got to the top, they found not a person needing rescuing, but a plastic "mannequin," put there as part of one of Jenkins' public art exhibits.
The police were not amused. They asked the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, which had sponsored the exhibit, to take it down. Total viewing time to the public -- 20 minutes.
Ellen Wallace, the marketing and communications manager for SECCA, offered a warning about the human-like art: there will be more.
"That's only one of the four," Wallace said. "We're going to do our homework and better inform the police so that they will know exactly what is going up and where for the next ones.''
lgraff@wsjournal.com
727-7279
Jenkins will give a free talk today at 5:30 p.m. at the Reynolda House Museum of Art.
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